ffirehorse writes “An interesting article from the New York Times (registration required), with quotes from Joseph Janes and Paul Duguid (among others), that touches on the perennial dilemma of the ‘deep web’ and notes the increase in agreements between academic libraries and search engine companies (such as Google and Yahoo!) to make university collections accessible to a broader public.
Best quote: ‘Although it seems like an apocalyptic change now, over time we’ll see that young people will grow up using many ways of finding information,’ said Abby Smith, director of programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources, a nonprofit group in Washington. ‘We’ll see the current generation we accuse of doing research in their pajamas develop highly sophisticated searching strategies to find high quality information on the Web,’ Dr. Smith said. ‘It’s this transition period we’re in, when not all high-quality information is available on the Web — that’s what we lament.'””
PJs-based Research
If you know what you’re doing on the Web and/or have remote access to periodical and other types of databases through a public or academic library, I’m all for doing research from home. Why not? I did it while working toward my MLS a few years ago and it was great!
However, a big improvement on Web-based research would be easier access to the “hidden internet” of digital library collection, as one librarian is quoted in the article.